


Victuuri Used Charm!

by thisbedutch



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Fluff, M/M, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-14
Updated: 2019-09-14
Packaged: 2020-10-18 02:11:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,240
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20631383
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thisbedutch/pseuds/thisbedutch
Summary: [Written forlevi_robbed_my_tea_cupboardas part of the 2019 Victuuri Summer Loving event.]In the off-season Yuuri takes up Pokémon Go. Victor is intrigued.





	Victuuri Used Charm!

**Author's Note:**

  * For [levi_robbed_my_tea_cupboard](https://archiveofourown.org/users/levi_robbed_my_tea_cupboard/gifts).

> Written for [levi_robbed_my_tea_cupboard](https://archiveofourown.org/users/levi_robbed_my_tea_cupboard/pseuds/levi_robbed_my_tea_cupboard), whose prompt was Pokémon Go and apparently I have unresolved "Victor would know what pokémon is" issues :D
> 
> This was fun to do, and I hope you enjoy this little slice of fluffy Victuuri summer time!

* * *

During the off-season Yuuri starts using his phone like a lifeline. He knows he’s overdoing it because his phone battery dwindling into the single digits becomes a daily occurrence. And because at least twice now he’s looked up to find Victor watching him. Curious, concerned.

Each time he’s caught, he slips his phone away, sheepishly, and tangles their hands together. Kisses Victor when he makes a questioning sound in his throat, and notes the location for later - tomorrow - next week. He’s got field research to complete and gyms to maintain, and taking Makkachin for multiple walks only works as an excuse for so long until Victor starts giving him funny looks and Makka starts looking forlornly at her bed when he calls her over for walkies that once made her ecstatic.

It’s silly. Just a game on his phone. But his life is usually so full of work, practice, and work again that Yuuri relishes having time where the most strenuous physical thing he does is flick a digital ball at a digital creature. Where the most strenuous thing _emotionally _is trying not to teach Victor every curse word that exists in Japan when said digital creature refuses to get inside said ball.

It’s fun, it appeals to Yuuri’s natural perfectionist nature in much the same way most games do, and he keeps it _resolutely secret_. 

Not because he thinks Victor will be mean, or judgemental; Yuuri knows him too well for that, would be insulted by his _own _thoughts if he did find himself thinking that. But...it feels a bit...childish. Something somehow beneath Victor. So he slides his phone away, hides the screen when Victor inevitably peers over Yuuri’s shoulder (usually _on _Yuuri’s shoulder, as it’s the prime location to pout until he’s kissed) and acts a lot like he imagines a cheating husband would.

Victor, to his credit, waits until they’re on their third trip to the castle in one week to bring it up.

Yuuri’s just knocked some ingrate Team Valour trainer off the gym, in between trying to look like he’s doing perfectly acceptable grown-up things like...well, staring at his phone screen and pretending not to notice his fiancé leering at him, when there’s a puff of breath against his temple. Deliberate, but not obnoxious. Or at least, the sort of obnoxious he’s come to love, that feels more like comfort than consternation.

He looks up just as Victor sags into him, whining his name into his hair and wrapping both arms around Yuuri’s shoulders.

“Are they pretty?” Victor teases. 

Yuuri tilts his head back to smile at him.

“The prettiest,” he says, tucking one hand over Victor’s arms - freckled already, two weeks into the Hasetsu summer. “I think he’s ghosting me though.”

Victor makes a noise that’s halfway offended, halfway a laugh. 

“Let me speak to him, I’ll give him a piece of my mind.” 

Then he plucks Yuuri’s phone out of his hands.

Yuuri has a moment of panic, irrationally, that the screen is still on the gym (now righteously blue) and that this is it. This is where he’s outed and exposed as, oh god, _a man who plays computer games._

He feels the sweat on his neck turn cold; Victor looks up from the screen at him, and his lips curve into a smile. 

Yuuri feels simultaneously patronised and adored. He has to do something to seem less pathetic than he feels, so he says, weakly, “gotta catch’em all?”

_Yeah that seems about right,_ he thinks, immediately before the desire to move to another country and adopt a new identity sinks in.

Victor stares.

Yuuri counts the seconds like the wobble of a pokeball. Like he’s accidentally thrown a normal ball at a shiny, high CP legendary, who is now looking at him like they can’t believe his idiocy either. 

“Yuuri,” Victor finally says, only slightly incredulous, “have you been ignoring me for a game?”

“No.” Yuuri replies too quickly. “I’ve been ignoring you for Pokemon.”

Victor squints at him, looking lovely in the gold of the afternoon sun, but also, confused as hell. He clutches Yuuri’s phone to his chest when Yuuri reaches for it, and shakes his head.

“_Victor_.”

Victor bends, pecks Yuuri’s lips and says, “Teach me how to play.”

“What?”

“The game. I want to know what’s got you so distracted you don’t even notice your own husband-”

“Future husband,” Yuuri corrects, with a not insignificant amount of delight, before Victor barrels on.

“I’ll give it back when you promise to teach me to play.”

It’s silly - Victor’s pouting and Yuuri knows full-well he could snatch his phone back without complaint if he chose to, but…

The look he’s being given is playful, but underlain with curiosity. The same way Victor watches the fledgling beginnings of a routine at the rinkside. Despite the sun, a chill runs through Yuuri’s body, and he nods. Once down, then up, and Victor beams, hands him back his phone.

Yuuri reaches for it only for Victor to yank it back again, a funny little tilt to his smile.

“Not on the walk back though? I don’t think I could survive knowing I can’t beat pokémon for your attention for twenty minutes at least.”

It’s teasing, not tense. A weight lifts lightly off Yuuri’s heart, much as the twisty, tense sensation of embarrassment lurks. He catches Victor’s hand, loosely, and gives him his best _eros _look. Lips quirked just so, thumb rubbing that spot on Victor’s bony wrist that makes his cheeks pink. Then he delicately retrieves his phone.

“I’d never pass you over for pikachu.”

* * *

The inn is simultaneously busier and quieter in the summer. Locals who’d spend the winter in the baths or the bar are mostly with their families on holiday elsewhere, while the inn proper is host to more foreign or out of town visitors. Since Onsen On Ice - not to mention everything that followed - it’s become something of a pilgrimage destination, and they’re lucky the guests currently staying are polite, more interested in seeing the town and beach than bothering the skaters holing up in the banquet room out back.

They get back and slump, sweaty, on the bed, until Yuuri decides he feels gross enough to at least roll onto his back.

Victor remains strewn across the sheets like a gangly doll, and Yuuri pokes his shoulder through his shirt (dark with sweat across the small of his back, his underarms, and Yuuri feels unbearably fond). He receives a grunt in reply and smiles, happiness rinsing over him, almost cool enough to make him feel more human than swamp-thing again.

He can hear Makka snoring in her bed, percussion to the sounds of the inn around them and of Victor fidgeting beside him. For a second Yuuri just...stops. Shuts his eyes to breathe in air that has weight, both humidity and home, before he imprints it, like an ink-stain, to memory. 

A hand lands in the centre of his chest, startling him back into the moment; Victor has shifted, looking up at him through his hair and stroking his thumb over Yuuri’s heart.

“After dinner?” He asks, sounding tired and hopeful all at once.

Yuuri agrees, though he insists on a shower after dinner - too battered by sun, by sea, by Victor’s caressing fingers tugging at his heartstrings to feel up to anything too strenuous on a full stomach. He takes it cold (ignoring the look Victor shoots him when he mentions that fact) and feels less sleepy, or at least, less likely to pass out if he even begins to try to explain ‘how to Pokémon’ to Victor.

It’s not that Victor’s a poor student. He wouldn’t be half as good at skating if he was. He’s just...not always great at the whole ‘paying attention’ thing. Especially when it comes to Yuuri, in close proximity, in loose clothing. But he asked, and Yuuri promised and, watching the water spiral down the drain, he starts to feel a little excited about it.

This is something only he can do for Victor. Yuuri is the only person who gets to see the gaps in Victor’s knowledge up close, is the only one Victor would dare bare such a thing to. Yuuri has been playing alone (technically, as Phichit is miles away and Makka doesn’t show much interest in games that don’t involve actual, real-world balls) and god he - he’s been _enjoying_ it and he gets to share that. With Victor Nikiforov.

He sits, cross-legged on the bed, and Victor drapes over him so he can watch Yuuri install the app on his phone. Something he’s perfectly capable of doing himself, but if Yuuri’s doing this, he’s doing it right. 

“So, it’s a mobile game?” Victor asks, chin propped on Yuuri’s shoulder.

“Yes.” Yuuri taps the screen to open the set-up menu, and says, “You catch pokémon for the professor, fight, trade, and stuff. Here, so, pokémon are these little -”

He pauses, caught on Victor’s amused look. He’s smiling that way he does when he’s trying not to say something sarcastic or cutting - but his eyes are affectionate and fixed on Yuuri’s face.

Yuuri feels a flustered all of a sudden.

“...What?” He asks.

Victor leans closer, presses a soft smack of a kiss to Yuuri’s cheek, then says into his ear, “I’m twenty-eight, Yuuri. I know what pokémon is.”

“Oh,” Yuuri replies, cheek still tingling with the impress of Victor’s lips. He feels embarrassment pink his skin and doesn’t quite know what to say. Because, yeah, of course Victor knows what pokémon is - he was a child in the nineties and, presumably, spent at least a _little _time outside of the ice rink.

He’d been _excited _to share this with Victor, childish as it seems. To be the teacher for once, to support him with Yuuri’s own experience. The game is fun, and it involves travel, which makes it perfect as a distraction when they’re crossing the globe.

_Stupid_, the little gremlin in his brain says. _Stupid game, stupid you, why on earth would Victor Nikiforov need you?_

Yuuri fiddles with the edge of Victor’s phone-case, unsure of where to go next without childishly shoving him, muttering and running away.

As if reading his mind from the anxious tapping of his fingernail, Victor gently takes his phone and when he speaks he sounds genuinely interested.

“How does it work then? It’s been a while since I played.”

Yuuri can’t help asking.

“When did you last play?”

“Hmm,” Victor narrows his eyes as he hums thoughtfully, “I think...it was the gold one? I liked the sheep pokemon.” He turns his head to beam heart-meltingly at Yuuri, and adds, “it was the closest I could get to a poodle.”

Yuuri smiles and it’s like a faucet, relief spilling through him, warm and cleansing.

“You know I can tell you’re just pretending not to remember the names.”

Victor blushes. Buries his face dramatically into Yuuri’s shoulder, where he whispers, “You bully me so much, Yuuri.”

Yuuri huffs a quiet little laugh, and Victor pulls back to look at him properly. He’s got his game-face on, the one that he wears at competitions, that only Yuuri gets to see _off _the ice. It’s an impossibly attractive look.

“I want a mareep.” He says, seriously.

_Okay_, Yuuri thinks, as he leans in to kiss determination into his mouth. 

_A mareep you shall have._

* * *

Victor is an...interesting player. He follows no pattern or technique Yuuri can recognise, but somehow it _works_. After a day or so spent swearing at his phone screen (often in Russian, but once or twice Yuuri hears something he’s sure Victor could only have heard from himself) he’s hit level 5 and Yuuri’s not sure _how_. 

Which is to say, Victor’s the most chaotic, _successful _pokémon player Yuuri’s ever encountered, and seems to be having a whale of a time with it. It becomes quickly apparent that he’s more concerned with collecting than fighting, and Yuuri has an indulgent moment of casting the two of them as an ace trainer/pokémon breeder pair - if they were npcs in one of the main series they’d present a dual challenge of Yuuri’s hand-picked, high CP team, and whatever Victor thinks is cute.

They’d be _great_.

After a _week _Victor’s level 10, and it figures that he’d be good at it without trying - only, Yuuri knows he is trying. That Victor is incapable of not trying, especially when Yuuri is involved. Any embarrassment he ever had is thoroughly quashed when Yuuri takes him on his first raid and Victor lights up, looking intense and elated, and squashes Yuuri into a playful kiss after they complete it.

“What was that for?” He asks, still breathless when Victor steps away.

Victor holds up his phone, at the Suicune he’s just added to his pokédex.

“I got Ice Dog.”

“Is that...what you’re naming it?”

He’s not sure why he bothers asking - Victor’s smile has gone toothy and he looks not unlike he’s been caught with his hand in the cookie jar. 

Ice Dog is joined in no short order by Makkachu (several, Victor seems incapable of _not _catching any pikachu he finds and gives them all the same name for no apparent reason) and an Entei he names Hot Dog; realisation hits approximately three seconds after he hits enter and by that point, he insists, it’d be cruel to change its name.

“I’m getting a lot of insight to how you must have played the originals,” Yuuri remarks, watching Victor tap in the name ‘Christophe’ for a newly caught luvdiss. 

Victor hums, giving him an amused look over the top of his mobile phone.

“I don’t know what half of these are,” he points out, “might as well give them names I’ll remember them by.”

Yuuri replies, “Suicune was in Gold. And everyone knows pikachu.”

It’s a silly thing, between banter and bickering, and it warms his bones more than the sun beating down on them; Victor finishes what he’s doing and slips his newly free hand into Yuuri’s, rubs his ring with his thumb.

“Shall we?”

Yuuri nods, tugs him in the direction of a gym that’s recently been turned red and says, “It’s a shame Makkachin can’t play with us.”

She’s trotting beside them, looking particularly fluffy, and ecstatic at being out with her dads in such high spirits. She couldn’t handle a raid (an issue of practicality rather than inability to understand; Yuuri’s sure she’s smart enough to get it, but paws aren’t great for touchscreens) but he’s sure she could handle walking an egg or two.

With enough treats it couldn’t even be considered cruelty, he muses.

Victor, always apparently telepathic for Yuuri and yuuri only, whispers into the shell of his ear.

“I’ve seen some very cute doggy bag-packs…”

Makka remains blissfully ignorant of her potential future as an egg-hatcher and starts bouncing around happily as they approach the small park where the gym is; a small statue in the middle of the park is their destination, a small bush to the side is Makkachin’s. She heads off to inspect it with glee, leaving Yuuri with Victor in one hand and his phone in the other.

The gym is under Valour control, and Yuuri’s been on a one-man mission to keep Hasetsu’s gyms blue. He scowls when he sees the chansey camped out atop it, and is about to establish Mystic dominance when Victor makes a surprised, excited sound.

Yuuri looks up from the gym to find Victor engrossed in his screen. It’s adorable, and Yuuri can very nearly imagine him as a young boy, gasping at his gameboy the same way.

“Yuuri, look-” He turns the screen and Yuuri looks to find a pink mareep sitting in the centre of the capture screen.

Victor has found a shiny of his favourite pokémon, because of _course he has_; the mareep runs through its attack animation and Victor _squeaks._

Yuuri smiles, tucks the memory of that sound away, and gently releases his hand so Victor can set about catching it properly. Gets a grateful little grin in response. He ignores the call of the gym to watch Victor attempt to land his first shiny. Excited for him, with him, and then, quite suddenly, _utterly fucking baffled_.

Victor doesn’t seem aware berries exist. Which, sure, fine, they’re not a necessity for capturing, but it’s a _shiny_. Yuuri would use all the help he could get. Victor does, however, seem to understand the concept of curveballs. He spins the (_standard_!) ball until it’s a blur then _flings _it at the edge of the screen - all with one thumb. 

_He yeeted it_, Yuuri thinks, slightly incredulously, as the ball veers back and lands dead-centre. The white text of ‘excellent!’ somehow unsurprising.

“Do you...always throw like that?” Yuuri asks, as they watch the ball wobble once, twice, then click closed on the third.

Victor gives him a look. Not unpleasant, but obviously querying. 

Yuuri decides to drop it, and leaves Victor to name the mareep while he sets about demolishing _this fool_ on the gym.

It takes three fights - he doesn’t lose any, the chansey just has ridiculous CP - and his own team perform to perfection. Yuuri tucks his phone away with a satisfied hum once the gym has his own snorlax atop it. He finds Victor watching him fondly and cocks his head, but before either of them can talk Makkachin comes barrelling into him.

This being her favourite way of greeting him, he manages not to be knocked over, but he still staggers. Laughs and fusses her ears. She pants, happily, then drops back down to look between the two of them.

“Are we ignoring you?” He asks her, and earns an enthusiastic lick to his hand.

Victor bends down to fuss her properly.

“We’re not ignoring you, Makka! You’re helping us aren’t you, checking under the bushes for wild pokémon…”

“We can go if you want,” Yuuri tells them, “it’s about time we headed back anyway.”

_And there’s a gym on the seafront that he’s been locked in a week-long fight with some Team Spark hooligan he needs to check on._

Victor nods, stands, and they make their way back. Dog and pokémon in tow. The walk is slow, nice. Yuuri finds himself looking over at Victor, a little fluttery thing starting in his chest everytime he sees him looking at his phone.

_I got Victor Nikiforov into Pokémon Go_, he thinks and wishes, not for the first time, that his younger self could see this.

Part of him wants to share this with the world, another wants to keep it close, locked into his own heart. A third, slightly louder part, grabs Victor’s arm and pulls him, excitedly, towards the gym.

Victor lets him, an indulgent smile on his face; Yuuri wonders how many other people he’d let lead him, through a town, through a dance. Can’t help flushing even warmer at the whispery thought that the number is zero.

This time, when Yuuri pulls out his phone, Victor wraps himself around Yuuri to watch over his shoulders. The battle starts and he tries not to be too distracted by Victor’s breath across his cheek.

“You’re blue team, too,” Victor murmurs, and Yuuri’s hand twitches on a dodge, “you have good taste.”

“What other team would I be?” Yuuri replies, as he annihilates the Team Spark goon’s slaking.

Victor hums, and they sway gently together as they watch its heart deplete to 0. Despite the heat it’s not uncomfortable being pressed up along Victor’s front. Once the gym is reclaimed, Victor drops one of his many Makkuchus into it, alongside Yuuri’s alolan raichu. The pokémon stand on the gym platform, raichu hovering in front of Makkachu as if protecting it.

Yuuri leans into Victor’s chest and they stay there, watching the orange of the sunset washing to sea, while Makkachin digs in the sand.

* * *

Yuuri’s decision process in choosing a team took all of about three seconds before he selected Team Mystic. He doesn’t really inspect that choice until later - specifically, that night, curled in bed with Victor after reclaiming the seafront gym. They’re going through Victor’s pokémon and suggesting names for the few he hasn’t already named. It doesn’t take long before they’re running through all their friends’ names.

Victor names a meowth ‘yuriowth’ and Yuuri presses his lips together to stop the inelegant snort threatening to burst out of him.

Victor’s eyes are glittering when he looks at him - he seems to take a special joy in making Yuuri laugh, like maybe he’s not had much chance to do so before and this is some wondrous new thing - or maybe he’s just a lovesick idiot like Yuuri himself, for which Yuuri is incredibly thankful. 

He lies half on Victor, and watches him scroll through his friend list. At the moment it’s made up of himself, Yurio, Chris (which is a minor surprise until Victor tells him he collects cat pokémon and has made a machamp his buddy) and, for some reason, _Mari, _who point-blank refused to add Yuuri when he asked. 

Yurio seems to have picked Spark, while Chris is Valour, and this reminds Yuuri of what Victor said in the park. So he asks, sleepily, “Why did you pick Team Mystic?”

Victor hums and puts his phone down, looks down at Yuuri with soft eyes.

“They were blue.” He says, as if it’s obvious.

Yuuri accepts it for a second, because blue isn’t Victor’s favourite colour but then, neither are red or yellow. Then he frowns up at him.

“That’s it?”

“Well,” Victor shrugs, “they’re the same blue as your glasses.”

“Oh.” Yuuri says. Then _oh_, he thinks, flooded with the sort of terrifying, cliff-edge affection he didn’t think was possible to live through until Victor.

He sits back, dislodging sheets and phone to climb onto Victor’s lap and just - just _look at him_.

His silver hair is a little limp, curling after a day of August humidity; the freckles across his cheeks barely hide the way the sun’s caught his fair skin, and the smell of moisturising cream - halfway between perfume and medicinal - lingers.

Victor looks unpolished and sleepy and sunburnt and he blinks at Yuuri, loving but lost.

“Victor,” Yuuri whispers, “_Victor_.”

He bumps their foreheads together, too overwhelmed to do much more than cling to him like a koala. It’s not long before he feels the weight of Victor’s hands sliding up his back to cuddle him, accompanied by the sweet press of his lips against Yuuri’s jaw.

The three seconds it took Yuuri to pick Team Mystic were spent staring at the leader’s sprite - specifically, her silver hair. He doesn’t know how to tell Victor that without sounding pathetic, but he wants to, so bad. To repay Victor’s honesty with his own - honesty Victor makes seem so easy, so forthright with his love for Yuuri and anything Yuuri does.

It’s less easy to get it tripping off his tongue, so he kisses him instead. Pours it into his lips, which turn it into movement instead of shaping sound. When they pull apart Victor looks even more dishevelled, and Yuuri’s heart hurts a little at the sight.

“You know, we could be a pokémon power couple,” Victor says, so quiet it’s almost lost between them.

Yuuri huffs a little laugh, and thinks, again, of the ace trainer/pokémon breeder combo they could make. God, he agrees. He’s a grown man, in bed with his equally grown fiancée, talking about the game his sister rolled her eyes at him for gushing about, and he’s - he’s _happy_.

He gropes around behind himself for Victor’s phone, pulls it close so he can see it. He scrolls and taps and Victor sits back, arms still round Yuuri as he works.

Eventually he finds the shiny mareep, still unnamed, and even as the little voice in his brain tells him it’s stupid, he types the name in. He turns it around to show Victor, bolstered by the conviction that this is the stupidest, sweetest thing he may have done.

He watches Victor’s eyes drop to the screen, the minute movements of reading. It’s seconds long but it feels elastic, stretching out until he’s accompanied only by his thumping heartbeat. Yuuri gets to watch the fractional shift, the moment joy bleeds out, under Victor’s skin, pulling his features into a wide smile.

“I thought you didn’t like that hashtag?”

“It’s growing on me,” Yuuri replies, burrowing back down into Victor’s side. Pulling him down with him to lie together across the bed. 

“But if you ever tell anyone I named your mareep Victuuri I’m taking you off my friends list.”

Victor gasps, mock offended, then makes a funny little gesture over his heart as a salute, or a promise.

Yuuri trusts it. Him. The promise round his own ring finger. He kisses him again - slow this time - until they’re almost seeping into one another. It’s almost more effort to pull away, but when he does he sees on Victor’s face that he feels the same way.

Fatigue has been tugging at him for some time and he sighs against Victor’s shoulder. Thinks, dreamily, of the two of them and the worlds they have to conquer ahead of them as he relinquishes to sleep.

He doesn’t, thankfully, have to count sheep to get there.

* * *

**Author's Note:**

> Victor would beat the elite four with a party made up of 5 mareeps and an over-levelled starter. He retires to the pokémon wilds and raises all the fluffiest pokémon in existence. Somehow he remains undefeated.
> 
> Victor's inexplicable Pokémon Go prowess is inspired in part by my father. You haven't experienced Gamer Confusion until you discover your 63yo parent has, in the space of six months, acquired 5 gyarados, and named them all Gerald/Geraldine.


End file.
